A forum for beginners and members of other Buddhist traditions to ask questions about Theravāda (The Way of the Elders). Responses require moderator approval before they are visible in order to double-check alignment to Theravāda orthodoxy.

Hi all, of the three unwholesome roots - greed/aversion/delusion - I am still unsure of what is even meant by delusion in the buddhist sense. Is delusion the process of creating the "Self" image? Is delusion making ourselves neurotic? Is it ignorance - that we dont even know we are creating suffering? or is it just holding wrong beliefs and generally causing mischief?
Any help would be appreciated.

Expecting impermanent things to remain permanent, thinking that stressful things are pleasurable eg. the chase for fame/fortune/good looks and believing that the body, thoughts, feelings, perceptions are ours.

And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter: This is called right speech.

"When those with discernment listen,
they regain their senses,
seeing the inconstant as inconstant,
the stressful as stressful,
what's not-self as not-self,
the unattractive as unattractive.
Undertaking right view,
they transcend all stress & suffering."https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitak ... .than.html

“At the cognitive level, which is its most basic sphere of operation, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, thoughts, and views, so that we come to misconstrue our experience overlaying it with multiple strata of delusions. The most important of these delusions are three: the delusion of seeing permanence in the impermanent, of seeing satisfactionin the unsatisfactory, and of seeing a self in the selfless. Thus we take ourselves and our world to be solid, stable, enduring entities, despite the ubiquitous reminders that everything is subject to change and detruction. We assume we have an innate right to pleasure and direct our efforts to increasing and intensifying our enjoyment with an anticipatory fervour undaunted by repeated encounters with pain, disappointment and frustration. And we perceive ourselves as self-contained egos, clinging to various ideas and images we form of ourselves as the irrefragable truth of our identity.

Wheras ignorance obscures the true nature of things, wisdom removes the veils of distortion, enabling us to see phenomena in their fundamental mode of being with the vivacity of direct perception. The training in wisdom centers on the development of insight (vipassana-bhavana), a deep and comprehensive seeing into the nature of exstence which fathoms the truth of our being in the only sphere where it is directly accessible to us, namely in our own experience.”—“The Noble Eightfold Path”, Bikkhu Bodhi.

English language has expressions like "getting hyped up", "don't believe the hype", etc. In my country we call that "getting into a movie". For example teenagers might get hyped up on being cool. Others might get hyped up in the ganger movie. A pimp might get hyped up on how "he is somebody", on how he "does not give a F about police" and stuff like that. His head is caught into the gangster movie. That's why one of the 40 rules of pimping is "don't believe the hype". He should stay focused on the money and not get hyped up like that. Normal people get hyped up into how collage makes them "be somebody", how their job makes them be "from the upper class" etc. and get hyped up like that, get into that movie.

Delusion is that thing that they have due to being hyped up/being into a movie. Besides getting hyped up, there is also delusion that appears due to normal attachments that don't necessarily require one to be into a movie. For example an alcoholic might claim alcohol is not causing him any problem, that it's not detrimental for him. A drug user might say the same. If he would not have attachment for alcohol or drugs, he would have a normal and objective opinion about that habit, his thinking would not be influenced by delusion.

Hi all, of the three unwholesome roots - greed/aversion/delusion - I am still unsure of what is even meant by delusion in the buddhist sense. Is delusion the process of creating the "Self" image? Is delusion making ourselves neurotic? Is it ignorance - that we dont even know we are creating suffering? or is it just holding wrong beliefs and generally causing mischief?
Any help would be appreciated.

This talk "Delusion" given by by Ajahn Sumedho a few years ago might be helpful: